I got to see my favorite episode of Good Eats the other day. I’ll be the first to tell you that I am desperately in love with Alton Brown. He’s kind of geeky, super smart, and on top of it all can make a badass chocolate ganache. If I weren’t married to the most wonderful man in the world, Alton would be number two on my list (the number one spot is reserved for Batman). There is nothing sexier in food and in writing than chocolate. Aside from being versatile, it just slides on your tongue and down your throat, coating your insides in a way that I don’t even have to try and make sound sexy.

Think about it for a minute. We bring chocolates on dates, we write about pouring chocolate syrup on someone else’s naughty bits for a bit of kink, and we indulge in it at all times for all reasons without stopping to think that it might be dirty or taboo. Chocolate is the perfect drug, the perfect plot device, the perfect seduction tool, and the perfect ingredient. And we take it for granted.

Try to imagine a world without chocolate. Would Anne in Anne of Green Gables been nearly as endearing if she had not attempted to share her chocolate drops with her bosom chum Diana? Would we care nearly as much about Nigella Lawson if we could not watch her sink her teeth into a toothsome chocolate cupcake without shame? Would anyone have gone to see that piece of shit werewolf movie Blood and Chocolate if the title had not been so provocative?

Even eating chocolate is sexy. The act its self is sinful, the way you can’t help but take the first luscious big bite so that you can get the flavor of it in every corner of your mouth. Then after all that, you find yourself licking your fingers to get every last drop, every crumb while doing something extremely sexually stimulating. And to top it off, you can do it alone, with one other person, or in front of an entire group. Chocolate touches on almost every fetish out there, if you really want to get into it.

I get that not everyone cares about chocolate the way I do. Not every woman in the world is a “chocoholic” and not every man in the world dreams of pouring a stream of Hershey’s over his partner’s quivering form during a session of extended foreplay. But the next time you’re baking something with cocoa in it, just slowly lick your fingers and think about how good it feels to do so. Or the next time you are writing, add in someone eating a piece of expensive, fine chocolate and how it would make them act.